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Reinforcement of municipal expertise in remodeling unhealthy zones in Abidjan and Cotonou

Cotonou and Abidjan suffer from unhealthy intra-urban areas and are having trouble developing sustainably. Therefore, the goal is to enhance the municipal teams’ and their partners’ know-how on urban planning so they can apply it to two pilot locations in each city. The methods and tools used are capitalized and transferred to other municipal teams in Benin, Ivory Coast and the sub-region.

Historically, Abidjan’s urban and periurban agriculture has always been dynamic. However, it is facing some challenges. The low soil fertility, the depletion and pollution of water resources and the rise of parasites pressure are jeopardizing farming activities that could create income for thousands of families.

This pilot project’s goal is to reinforce the agroecological skills of 25 farming technicians from 15 Ivory professional organizations and NGOs. It supports the creation of a network uniting 90 pilot market gardeners.

They will be able to spread practices and systems to 500 other farmers in Abidjan’s 10 different production sites in 5 towns.

Farm Development and Investment Program in Gabon (PRODIAG)

Agricultural development is one of the foundations of the Gabonese economy. PRODIAG is a pillar in this context of emergence and follows upon IGAD’s* project to support the development of outer-urban farming implemented these last years.

The aim is to keep experimenting and spreading adapted and sustainable technical solutions responding to local markets’ needs in Gabon’s nine provinces.

Local skills center in agroecology – Cacheu and Bafata regions

SWISSAID supports family farms and professional organizations in Guinea-Bissau to implement their agricultural activities. In order to develop these activities, SWISSAID wishes to set up a local skills center in agroecology.

Agrisud supports SWISSAID in this initiative carrying out training and follow-up activities with about 20 members from this hub.

The expected benefits of this collaboration are at two levels:

producers: by providing concrete answers to the problems they encounter in the implementation of their market-gardening activities, and especially issues concerning the protection of soil fertility, water resources and pest pressure;

SWISSAID and its partners: by supporting them to establish a skills development center in agroecology for efficient crop and livestock systems, also well adapted to the region context.

Learning cycle « Management advice for sustainable agriculture »

This cycle was designed especially for the project's needs based on both guides« Agroecology in Practice » (Agrisud, 2010) and « Managing Advice for family farms (VSB) » (Agrisud, 2015). It is addressed to the teams / partners who support farmers and professional agricultural organizations.

It is based on the transfer of methodologies and tools:

understand the farming operation and how it works;

understand agroecology and its economic, social and environmental dimensions;

Professionalizing agriculture — Itasy region

The Itasy Region, close to Antananarivo, has a great farming potential but the production is still limited and threatened by the farmers’ low technical and management skills and also by a natural fragile environment.

Thanks to the project, 2000 farmers are receiving technical and economical reinforcement in order to professionalize their activities in production, management and marketing.

Evaluation of the farms’ carbon footprint in the Itasy project

If small family farms adopt agroecology it could be a real solution to lower the agricultural carbon footprint. However, the workings of the agricultural systems are complex and there is a lack of reference when considering specific emission standards in Madagascar, therefore, it is difficult to measure specifically environmental advantages.

The project’s goal is to set up a method to evaluate the farms’ carbon footprint. It will identify the emission standards specific to the Region’s agricultural system.